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The View from My Kitchen

Benvenuti! I hope you enjoy il panorama dalla mia cucina Italiana -- "the view from my Italian kitchen,"-- where I indulge my passion for Italian food and cooking. From here, I share some thoughts and ideas on food, as well as recipes and restaurant reviews, notes on travel, and a few garnishes from a lifetime in the entertainment industry.

You can help by leaving comments on posts and by becoming a follower. More than a hundred thousand people all over the world have viewed the blog and that's great. But every great leader needs followers and if I am ever to achieve my goal of becoming the next great leader of the Italian culinary world :-) I need followers! I promise, I'm not going to spam anybody. I'd just like to know who's out there and what your thoughts are on what I'm doing.

Grazie mille!

Wednesday, September 14, 2011

How To Properly Hand Wash Dishes

Ridiculous title, huh? “How To Wash
Dishes.” Everybody knows how to wash dishes, right? I'm not
talking about using a dishwasher. I'm referring to washing dishes by
hand. Well......maybe not so much.

I once wrote an article on kitchen
cleanliness in which I touched briefly on the subject of dishwashing.
Recent experiences in some home kitchens have prompted me to revisit
the topic in a little more depth. It seems a lot of people didn't
learn to wash dishes the way I did.

I learned the art of dishwashing in the
days before automatic dishwashers became as common as toasters. I
learned at the hands of experts; my grandmother and my mother. I
don't know that my grandmother ever even saw an automatic dishwasher,
and I know for certain she never used one. My mother had such disdain
for the devices that she used hers as a storage bin for her
Tupperware. Both women were lifelong hand dishwashers. Add to that
the fact that my first restaurant job was working as a dishwasher and
I think I present with some valid credentials on the subject.

But that's still not enough. In order
to avoid this being a “my mother taught me better than your mother
taught you” piece, I went further and did some research on proper
hand dishwashing.

Believe it or not, there are
specific procedures to follow.
It's not just a matter of running some water in the sink, dumping in
a little soap, and throwing in the dirty dishes. But after observing
some of the aforementioned kitchens it is obvious to me that these
basic techniques are being ignored, if they were ever taught in the
first place. Call me obsessive/compulsive if you will, but, based on
the horrendous hygiene I have observed in some home kitchens, I have
been known to sneak to the sink and stealthily rewash dishes before I
use them. Here's why.

I know
so many people who have an aversion to the most essential element of
hygienic dishwashing: hot water. Beyond my grandmother and my
mother, the experts with letters after their names will also tell you
that dishes should be washed in water as hot as you can tolerate. Now
this opens up a whole can of subjective worms as way too many people
apparently can't tolerate water heated above 99°.
That's body temperature, folks!If you can't tolerate putting
your hands in ninety-nine degree water, you shouldn't be able to
tolerate touching yourself! Many of these same folks will come out of
a shower with their bodies a nice shade of candy-apple red because
they like their showers hot. And
yet they wash their dishes in lukewarm water. Go figure. Worse still,
I know people who do dishes in room temperature water, water that is
actually cold. I've
said it before, I'll say it again: If you insist on using cold or
lukewarm water for dishwashing, just set up little cabanas beside the
sink for the e-coli, the salmonella, and the other varieties of
bacteria you're inviting to go swimming in your sink. That's all
you're really accomplishing. You're not getting anything clean.

Bacteria
don't drown. Water won't kill 'em. Heat kills
bacteria. To really sanitize your dishes, you need to heat them to
above 140°.
That's what dishwashers do. Obviously, sticking your unprotected
hands in 140°
water will likely send you to the emergency room.

But
dishes washed by hand can still be sanitized. It just takes a little
effort. You need hot water, a good dish soap – preferably an
antibacterial formula, a little bleach, and proper technique.

For
handwashing dishes, the FDA recommends a minimum water temperature of
110°.
To make sure I'm practicing what I'm preaching, I stuck a thermometer
in my dishwater. It registered 112.8°.
I heat my rinse water a little hotter than my wash water – about
115°.
Yeah, that's a little hot, but with rinse water, you can just snatch
and grab. You don't have to keep your hands submerged in it like you
do the wash water.

In restaurant
kitchens, there are three sinks; a wash sink, a rinse sink, and a
sanitizing sink. With only two sinks in my home kitchen, I combine
the rinsing and the sanitizing in one. In restaurants, there is a
specific chlorine level the health inspectors look for. (50 – 100
PPM, if you're curious.) At home, about a tablespoon of bleach per
gallon of water will suffice.

But
again, it's gotta be hot water.
If your skin is too sensitive or if you're worried about “dishpan
hands,” go get some rubber gloves. Don't risk your family's health.

Hot
water also gets your dishes cleaner. Grease doesn't break down in
lukewarm water. If you stick a dirty, greasy plate in a sink full of
90°
water, you'll come out with a plate that looks clean – but it'll
still be greasy. And if you've ever wondered why your glasses and
silverware look so spotty and filmy, check your water temperature.
You know that “sheeting action” one of the dishwasher detergents
advertises? You get the same effect when you use hot water. Dishes
washed in hot water dry faster and cleaner than those washed in warm
or cold water.

Now let's talk
about technique. First things first, scrape your plates. Dishes don't
get clean when they're in the water competing with floating chunks of
meat and potatoes.

Next, rinse your
dishes. The first plateful of spaghetti sauce that you toss unrinsed
into your dishwater is going to turn your water red and greasy for
every subsequent dish you put in.

Now stack 'em.
Stacking doesn't have anything to do with the actual cleanliness of
your dishes, but organized stacking makes the dishwashing process
cleaner and easier. Glasses, cups, and silverware stack first, plates
and serving dishes next, and pots and pans last.

This is also the
order in which you should wash your dishes. I know so many people who
just throw everything in the sink at the same time. But think about
it for a minute: what dishes do you really want to be the cleanest?
The ones that actually come in contact with your mouth, right? The
glasses, the cups, and the silverware. So it makes sense that you
should wash them first when the water is the hottest and the
cleanest. If you wash the glasses after – say – the greasy frying
pan, what can you expect to happen to your glasses? Thank you, but
I'll take my beverages without the floating layer of grease. And
those aren't “water spots” on your knives, forks, and spoons.
They're spots of whatever you had for lunch yesterday if you just
threw them in along with the dirty dishes.

Plates should be
next. Serving dishes and utensils follow the plates and then come the
pots and pans.

If you've got
really dirty pots and pans with lots of baked-on stuff stuck to them,
soaking is probably in order. Start with hot water, please, and a
little soap. I know the water will eventually cool, but starting with
hot water will give you a leg up on a good, effective soak better
than just soaking in cold water from the start. Allow at least ten
minutes soaking time. Some people advocate overnight soaking. In
fact, I just watched a TV commercial for an overnight soaking soap
product. Don't waste your time and money. Anything that hasn't soaked
off after, let's say half an hour, to be generous, in regular soap
and water probably isn't going to. That's when scrubbing pads come
into play.

Somewhere
along the line, you may have to change your water. The glasses and
silverware probably didn't do too much damage to the dishwater. But
after a dozen or so plates and serving dishes, are you really getting
anything clean? Think about it; what color is clean, fresh water?
Clear, of course. It has no color. So by the time your dishwater
develops a distinct reddish, brownish, greenish, or grayish color, is
it still truly clean and fresh? And should you reasonably expect to
get your dishes clean in such water? Time for a change.

Speaking of
changing things, how about those dishcloths, sponges, and towels?
Personally, I have no use for sponges. On a scale of 1 to 10, with 1
being a hospital's surgical suite and 10 being a toxic waste dump,
kitchen sponges rank number 11. You can't have them in commercial
kitchens; you shouldn't have them in home kitchens. Unless you're
preparing a science project on bacteriology. “Oh, but you can
sanitize them in the microwave!” Yeah, until the first time you put
them back in the water and the listeria and staphylococci invite all
their friends aboard. Ditch the sponge. If you have some sort of
unnatural addiction to sponges, at least try to find an antibacterial
one designed to limit microbial growth.

Dishcloths
are a better option, provided you take proper care of them. This
means changing them out frequently and also keeping them in proper
condition. A recent scientific study revealed that
dishcloths containing the lowest microbial count came from households
that replaced used dishcloths every day. Dishcloths containing high
microbial counts were those used five or more consecutive days and
never completely dried out during that time. The study determined
that when dishcloths were dried out after use, bacterial growth was
halted. So those of you who wad up your wet dishcloths and leave them
lying in or around the sink take note.

I
don't change my dishcloth every day. Nor do I use the same cloth for
a week. And I follow the FDA food code recommendation regarding use
of a sanitizer bucket for my dishcloths. But I don't leave them
soaking in the bucket because research also shows that after a couple
of hours, organic material present in the cloths neutralizes the
sanitizer and bacterial growth can occur. I soak them after use, take
them out and dry them, and replace them every other day. Unless, of
course, they are filthy, in which case I replace them right away.
Duh!

Dish
towels are another issue. Again, if restaurant inspectors catch you
drying dishes with a towel, there go a couple of points off your
rating. Air drying is best. And for goodness' sake, clean your drying
rack once in awhile! Putting clean dishes in a dirty drying rack is
an exercise in futility. If, however, you are like most people – me
included – and you sometimes use a dish towel, make sure it's a
clean dish towel. Not the one with which you wiped the chicken blood
off the counter. Not the one with which you mopped your sweaty
forehead, wiped your greasy hands, or got that little spill up off
the floor. Dish towel equals dish use. Nothing else.
When the towel gets damp, get a dry one. In the first place, you're
not really drying anything with a wet towel, now are you? And in the
second place, here come those pesky germs again. Dish towels should
be replaced in the same manner as dishcloths.

I
mentioned cleaning your drying rack. How about your sinks? How often
do you actually clean and sanitize your sinks and drains? Do you know
that most household's toilets are cleaner than their kitchen sinks?
That's because you think about cleaning the toilet, but you seldom
think about cleaning the sink. And yet, where do you wash the dishes
from which you eat? I sanitize my sinks and drains every day. All it
takes is a couple of minutes with some hot water and bleach.

One of the most
spectacularly, despicably unhygienic things I've ever seen in a home
kitchen involved filling up a sink with tepid water and a little soap
and then throwing dirty dishes into the sink throughout the day. At
some point along the way, said dishes were treated to a brief
encounter with a dirty cloth that had been wadded up on the counter.
Then they were rinsed under cold running water before being dried and
put away. I have to ask; why bother? For as much cleaning value as
you're getting out of that sinkful of disgusting cold, gray water
with grease and particulate matter floating in it and that nasty rag,
you might as well just put the dishes away dirty.
Lukewarmers aren't
quite as bad – but they're close. I'm sorry. I hate it for you that
you can't stand hot water, but neither can the grease and the germs.
If you're filling your sink with water that is cooler than body
temperature, you're just throwing a greasy pool party for bacteria.
Period. Turn up the water heater and get some gloves.
And remember the
steps the experts recommend – the ones my mama taught me: scrape
your dishes, rinse your dishes, stack your dishes, and don't do the
pots and pans first and then try to get the glasses clean. It just
won't happen.

2 comments:

Thank you i was curious about some things you covered my husband, and i clearly have different views on this, i will be bring up all of these things when he tries to wash dishes again lol you are also right some people were never shown the right way to wash. the sponge thing is interesting

My grandmother was a martinet when it came to dishwashing. Do it right or do it over.......and over.......and over.

My first ex-wife HATED doing dishes. We got six complete servings of eight as wedding gifts. She waited until the forty-seventh dish was dirty before she even thought about doing them.....and then she would wash two or three and hand off to me. When I introduced my second wife to my grandmother, the first words out of Grandma's mouth were, "Does this one do dishes?" :-)

Who Am I (and Why Should You Care)?

I've been around long enough to know a little bit about a lot of things. That said, there are a couple of things I know a little bit more about; food and entertainment.

I've been cooking since I was a kid -- a very long time, indeed -- and I've spent most of my adult life in the entertainment industry.

I've been writing about one or the other of these topics since the '80s, and I have been published in numerous magazines and newspapers over the years. I also spent the better part of two decades behind a microphone as the host of my own radio talk show.

Does all of this make me an expert? Nah! But I'm certainly entitled to my opinion -- and so are you! :-)